BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, Chair
2015-2016 Regular Session
SB 1040 (Hill)
Version: March 28, 2016
Hearing Date:
Fiscal: Yes
Urgency: No
NR
SUBJECT
Adoptions: rehoming
DESCRIPTION
This bill would define "rehoming" as an action taken to
facilitate a transaction by an adoptive parent to avoid
permanent parental responsibility by placing the minor in the
physical custody of another person and without court approval.
This bill would prohibit the rehoming of an adopted child and
would require the Department of Social Services to adopt
regulations to ensure that postadoptive services are provided to
adoptive parents who seek the assistance of the Department.
BACKGROUND
Over the past few years, headlines highlighting dramatic
failures in international adoptions have captivated the public.
In 2010, Torry Hansen outraged the adoption community when she
sent her seven year old adopted son on a plane back to Russia
with a note claiming that the child was mentally unstable and
had violent and severe psychopathic issues/behaviors. (See
[as of April 6, 2016].) In September 2013, Thomson
Reuters uncovered a large underground market where hundreds of
adopted parents look to find permanent homes for their unwanted
adopted children without the involvement of adoption agencies,
child welfare officials, lawyers, or the courts. These parents
advertise on Internet forums their unwanted children and the
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ability to transfer guardianship of children through a simple
power of attorney document. "Reuters analyzed over 5,000 posts
on Yahoo's 'Adopting From Disruption' forum and discovered that,
on average, a child was advertised for "rehoming" once a week.
Most children ranged from ages six to fourteen and most had been
adopted internationally from countries such as Russia, China,
Ethiopia, and Ukraine." (Nobile, Adoptions Gone Awry: Enhancing
Adoption Outcomes Through Post-Adoption Services and Federal and
State Laws Imposing Criminal Sanctions for Private Internet
Rehoming, (2015) 53 Fam. Ct. Rev. 474.) However, rehoming youth
adopted domestically through the foster system happens
frequently as well.
[V]ery little attention has been paid to the many children who
are a product of the foster care system and who return to
family court through its revolving doors after achieving
so-called "permanency" through adoption.
In the field of child welfare, changes in policy goals and
objectives to achieve permanency for children in foster care
have, in practice, resulted in an increase in adoptions.
Although there are no federal standards for data collection to
track broken adoptions, attorneys for children who regularly
practice in family court frequently see cases in which
children who were previously adopted return to family court or
to the foster care system as subjects in subsequent cases,
whether in abuse or neglect, custody or guardianship,
voluntary placements, "persons in need of supervision" (PINS),
or delinquency cases. (Post and Zimmerman, The Revolving Doors
of Family Court: Confronting Broken Adoptions, (2012) 40 Cap.
U.L. Rev. 437.)
Children adopted through the dependency system and private
international organizations have frequently suffered abuse,
neglect, and/or abandonment and are therefore at a
disproportionately higher risk of having developmental delays
and behavior problems than children of the general population.
Thus, despite a general lack of data collection on the topic, it
is not surprising that these adopted youth are the most
vulnerable to the practice of rehoming, which may be triggered
by behavioral and emotional issues of the child, prior placement
history, sexual abuse history, attachments of sibling groups,
attachment to the birth parent, prenatal drug and alcohol
exposure, and the lack of services and resources to properly
address these issues. (Donaldson What's Working for Children: A
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Policy Study of Adoption Stability and Termination, Adoption
Inst., 12-16 (Nov. 2004).)
Seeking to curb the practice or rehoming and also provide
services to families struggling with the special needs of
adopted children, this bill would define and prohibit the
rehoming of an adopted minor, and require the Department of
Social Services to adopt regulations to ensure that parents can
be connected with postadoptive support services.
CHANGES TO EXISTING LAW
Existing law makes it a misdemeanor for a person or organization
to advertise adoption services in any periodical or newspaper,
by radio, or by other public medium, if the person or
organization does not hold a valid license to place children for
adoption. (Fam. Code Sec. 8609.)
This bill would define "rehoming" as an action taken to
facilitate a transaction by an adoptive parent, an individual,
or an entity having custody of an adopted minor that is done
without court approval, and to avoid permanent parental
responsibility by placing the minor in the physical custody of
another person or entity.
This bill would provide an exception for adopted minors placed
with relatives and nonrelative extended family members, as
specified, and temporary placements due to a vacation,
school-sponsored activity, or the incarceration, military
service, medical treatment, or incapacity of a parent or
guardian.
This bill would prohibit an adoptive parent, an individual, or
an entity having custody of an adopted minor from rehoming the
minor.
This bill would require the Department of Social Services to
adopt regulations to ensure that postadoptive services are
provided to adoptive parents who seek the assistance of the
Department.
COMMENT
1.Stated need for the bill
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According to the author:
Rehoming is an unregulated child custody transfer in which
parents seek new homes for their children without the
safeguards and oversight of the courts or the child welfare
system. Rehoming has allowed abusers and others who escape
scrutiny to easily obtain children.
The process of rehoming is cheaper and less time consuming
than formal adoptions. The transfers are often completed with
nothing more than a notarized power of attorney. The Internet
makes it easy for adoptive parents to find complete strangers
willing to take in unwanted children. In some cases rehomed
children are taken in to care of adults with history of
neglect, abuse or sexual exploitation. Currently, there are no
laws in place to protect children from being rehomed in most
states. According to the United States Government
Accountability Office, only 7 states have enacted laws to
safeguard children who may be subject to rehoming.
2.Challenges facing families with adopted children
With the publication of the Reuters findings (see Background),
much attention has been focused on the rehoming of
internationally adopted children. Not as popular with the
media, but arguably just as common, is the rehoming of children
who have been adopted out of the foster system. Attorneys who
specialize in adoption point out that families experiencing a
disrupted adoption or seeking to rehome a special needs child
are often desperate and suffering from extreme guilt over the
fact that they have failed to provide the environment or
attention that the child needs. Frequently, the minor's
emotional and behavioral issues stem from "attachment" issues.
Attachment is the social and emotional relationship children
develop early on with significant people in their lives
(initially with their mother), and the quality of the attachment
ultimately affects the child's ability to develop subsequent
healthy relationships.
Healthy attachments are clinically associated with healthy
interpersonal relationships, while poor attachments are
"associated with a host of emotional and behavioral problems"
starting in childhood and lasting later in life. Children who
begin their lives with unhealthy attachments are at risk for
serious problems in the future. Abuse, neglect, or other
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forms of maltreatment can also compromise the ability of a
child to securely attach to the child's parent or primary
caregiver. To compound that, when a child experiences loss or
separation from the child's primary attachment figure, such as
placement in foster care, the child's ability to bond and
attach is further impacted. The attachment issues are
intensified by the myriad of problems that children may have
owing to their maltreatment, including: health, physical
growth, motor delays, compromised physiological systems,
cognitive and socio-emotional disturbances, and
psychopathology. (Post and Zimmerman, pp. 492-3.)
Adoption attorneys argue that often rehoming provides a better
home for a troubled child because the needs of a child are
better known and the parents and counsel are able to find
appropriate homes with families that have the experience or a
better environment for the child's specific needs. For example,
internationally adopted children frequently suffer from reactive
attachment disorder, which is a rare but serious condition that
arises from a failure to form normal attachments to primary
caregivers in early childhood. Mainstream treatment for reactive
attachment disorder focuses on increasing the responsiveness and
sensitivity of the caregiver, or if that is not possible,
placing the child with a different caregiver. Often, families
with no other children or with the financial ability to dedicate
significant time and resources to the troubled child are a
"better fit" because of the time and dedication it may take to
develop bonds later in life.
Staff notes that there is an important distinction between the
arguably rare stories reported in the media where parents
transfer responsibility of a minor with seemingly little thought
to the child's safety, and the experiences as reported by
professionals practicing in the adoption field, who serve
families that are seeking to find a home for a child that is
more appropriate than the one they, themselves, could provide.
Accordingly, the author offers the following amendments that
would allow parents to find new, permanent homes for children,
as long as the parties are represented by counsel and initiate a
lawful guardianship or adoption proceeding within a specified
period of time. These amendments would ensure that a court has
oversight of the process and ensures the best interest of the
minor.
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Author's amendments:
1) Page 2, strike lines 27-28
2) Page 3, strike lines 1-9 and insert the following:
9220. (a) For purposes of this chapter, "rehome" or
"rehoming" means an action taken to provide a new, permanent
home for a previously adopted minor with a person or persons
other than the adoptive parents, except as provided in
subdivision (c).
(b) A parent, an individual, or an entity having custody of a
minor may only rehome that minor if the following requirements
are met:
(1) the parent, individual, or an entity having custody of a
minor, and the prospective parent(s) or guardian both obtain
independent counsel within 60 days of placing the minor in the
physical custody of the prospective parent or guardian;
(2) the parent, individual, or an entity having custody of a
minor shall initiate a lawful guardianship or adoption
proceeding within 90 days of placing the minor in the physical
custody of the prospective parent, consistent with the
requirements of Probate Code Section 2100 et seq., Family Code
Section 8700 or 8800 et seq, or as otherwise provided in the
Family Code.
3) Page 3, strike lines 14 and 5.
1.Need for postadoptive resources for families
This bill would require the Department of Social Services to
adopt regulations to ensure that postadoptive services are
provided to adoptive parents who seek the assistance of the
Department. Connecting families with appropriate services is of
critical importance when dealing with special needs children.
States require much pre-adoption education and training for
foster parents, but there is no real equivalent for prospective
parents seeking an international adoption. Further compounding
the problem, the mental health needs of internationally adopted
children and children adopted out of the foster system are
arguably unique. Studies show a high usage of postadoption
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counseling, but that families are generally dissatisfied with
the therapy because the mental health professionals lacked
knowledge of unique adoption-related issues. A recent law
review article noted that the majority of therapists are not
trained in the emotional, psychological, and behavior issues of
an adopted child and the intricacies of an adoptive family.
That same article quoted an adoptive parent detailing the
struggle she experienced in finding adequate support:
Most of the adoption professionals in our area are not trained
to recognize infant attachment challenges and trauma. We went
to our first of many adoption counselors/therapists within
three weeks of coming home and although our daughter was
showing signs of Reactive Attachment Disorder, the therapist
totally missed those signs. It took us three years to finally
find help and we found it in a neighboring state so we had to
travel 800 miles bi-weekly to get our daughter (and family)
the help she needed. (Nobile, 53 Fam. Ct. Rev. 474 (2015).)
From a public policy perspective, increasing the accessibility
and effectiveness of postadoption services to adoptive families,
will arguably help many families find the help they need before
reaching a point of crisis where the parents feel that the only
option is rehoming. However, noting the potential lack of
appropriate resources discussed above, the Department of Social
Services may not have enough information or accessible community
resources to satisfy this bill's requirement of connecting
families with supportive services.
Accordingly, this bill should instead require the Department to
establish a working group for the purpose of considering the
unique needs of adoptive families that find themselves at risk
of, or considering, the rehoming of a child. Recommendations
made by the group could then be used by the Legislature and
Department to create regulations that would better connect
families with meaningful postadoption support. Accordingly, the
author offers the following amendments which will govern the
establishment, focus, and reporting requirements of the
aforementioned working group.
Author's amendments:
Sec. 9221 is added to the Family Code, to read:
(a) The Legislature acknowledges that adoptive families often
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face special challenges. This is particularly true in the case
of international adoptions, adoptions of special needs
children, and adoptions of dependent children who often have
experienced abuse, neglect, and multiple placements. The
Legislature finds and declares that it is the public policy of
the State of California to assist adoptive families and
adopted children, and intends this legislation to ensure that
these families receive the support needed to maintain the
family unit, and when necessary, find new, permanent homes for
youth.
(b)(1) In order to address and prevent the circumstances in
which a parent, individual, or entity having custody of a
minor seeks to rehome a minor, the State Department of Social
Services shall, in consultation with child advocacy
organizations, attorneys specializing in adoption and
guardianships, Judicial Council, foster caregiver
organizations, and individuals with expertise in the area of
positive youth development, establish a working group to
review the challenges facing families with adopted and special
needs children, to identify resources within the community
that will assist families with these challenges, and to make
recommendations to the Legislature as to the services that may
be helpful to these families.
(2) In developing the recommendations, the working group shall
consider all of the following questions:
(A) What are the specific challenges facing the following
families: families with special needs children; families with
children adopted through the foster system; and families with
internationally adopted children?
(B) What distinct resources are available to the different
types of families listed above, and would any of the resources
available to one group also be beneficial to another?
(C) What training and education is necessary to equip mental
health professionals with the tools necessary to provide the
families listed above with services tailored to their unique
needs?
(D) How can California effectively recruit more prospective
adoptive families that are able to provide new, permanent, and
loving homes to children coming out of disrupted adoptions?
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(E) What is the feasibility of California creating a
Clearinghouse of persons and entities whom are knowledgeable
in addressing the needs of and/or finding of subsequent
placements for children at risk of being rehomed, including
adoption agencies, social workers, attorneys, mental health
professionals, and prospective adoptive parents.
(c) The working group shall meet no later than June 1, 2017.
The recommendations developed pursuant to this section shall
be submitted in a report to the appropriate policy committees
of the Legislature on or before June 1, 2018.
Support : Executive Committee of the Family Law Section of the
State Bar (as proposed to be amended)
Opposition : None Known
HISTORY
Source : Author
Related Pending Legislation : None Known
Prior Legislation : None Known
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